Supervisor Chris Daly's inflammatory statements linking Mayor Gavin Newsom with cocaine use last week were only a few words from an eight-minute speech lambasting the mayor's plan to reduce services to some of the poorest people in the city.

But the fallout from the utterance entirely overshadowed the larger point he hoped to make and capped a fast fall from a political highpoint for the fiery supervisor from District 6.

Just a month ago, Daly was emerging as the clear leader of progressives in the city. He recently had won a key legislative victory over the mayor by passing $33 million in new affordable housing spending out of a budget surplus that had built up by the end of the fiscal year that winds down this month.

Related Stories

He had been in a position to wield great power as the chairman of a budget committee preparing to review the mayor's spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. Earlier this month, he had organized the first mass political gathering of progressives in the city in 30 years. He even was said to be seriously contemplating challenging Newsom in this fall's election for the city's top job.

Today, Daly is out as budget committee chairman and is the only supervisor without a seat on any legislative committee, greatly diminishing his authority over City Hall business. Without his presence on the budget panel, it remains to be seen how forcefully the board will work to overcome the mayor's continuing opposition to spending the $33 million for affordable housing, which Newsom did not include in his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year and which Daly has accused him of hijacking for his pet projects.

Daly's actions even snatched the spotlight from the scandal swirling around Supervisor Ed Jew, a sitting member of the board who is facing felony charges for allegedly lying about where he lives and is the target of a separate FBI public corruption investigation. And Daly's conduct has led Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier to begin drafting legislation to create a formal, punitive censure procedure for city supervisors.

Even Daly's close allies are expressing concern that his actions -- and sudden absence from the budget committee -- might jeopardize the things he and they care about most.

"We're nervous about that," said Jennifer Friedenbach, organizing director for the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness.

"It might impact how aggressively the fat is taken out of the budget and therefore there would be a smaller pot of money to distribute. All I can say is time will tell and hopefully it doesn't end up negatively impacting poor folks," said Friedenbach, who called Daly "the champion of poor and homeless people" in the city.

While Daly is well known for his advocacy for the city's downtrodden, he is perhaps better known for his personality and well-documented emotional outbursts. He is one of the city's best-known politicians, but has some of the lowest poll numbers.

Daly declined to be interviewed for this story. In a written response to questions submitted by The Chronicle, he said his supporters, including younger people and non-English speakers, are not as likely to be contacted by pollsters and that he thinks past polling has underestimated his support in the city.

"With that said, I don't make decisions based on polling data or even shifting political winds," Daly wrote.

Daly was first elected to office in 2000 in a near sweep for progressive candidates in supervisorial races. He ran on his credentials as a housing advocate in the Mission District. Like other progressives, he rode a backlash against the pro-development policies and patronage politics of then-Mayor Willie Brown.

But less than three months after taking office as one of the youngest supervisors in the history of the city, Daly made headlines after he and Brown nearly had a fistfight in Brown's office during a meeting on homelessness. Brown and Daly, who was 28 years old at the time, both said they were provoked by the other, but over time the incident has been tied more to Daly.

"I've never shied away from a fight," he told The Chronicle afterward. Brown likened him to former Supervisor Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in their City Hall offices in 1978.

A few days later, Daly apologized to Brown in a handwritten note saying, "Although I will never apologize for my passion, I do regret my contribution to the lack of decorum ..."

In June 2002, Daly was arrested in a protest at Hastings College of the Law over plans to build a parking lot there. The officer who arrested Daly said the supervisor threatened to have him fired; Daly denied that he made that comment.

That fall, Daly ran for his first re-election and captured more than half the votes on a crowded first-round ballot, avoiding a runoff.

Nearly a year later, in October 2003, Brown was traveling in Tibet and the two had patched up their relationship enough that Brown appointed Daly acting mayor in his absence. While fulfilling that role, Daly appointed and swore in two people to fill two vacancies on the powerful city Public Utilities Commission.

Normally, the acting mayor is only a ceremonial duty, but Daly used the opportunity to wield a significant mayoral power - the appointment of city commissioners. Reaction was split, though, with some seeing a childish power grab while others applauded his choices for the commission.

A month later, the Board of Supervisors considered a motion to censure Daly after a profane public exchange in which he was accused of telling members of the public gathered at a City Hall hearing to "f -- off." Daly conceded that he used the phrase, but said it was in a private conversation with one person and was not directed to the public at large. The board voted down the censure, but the incident remains part of his lore.

"Chris Daly has given the Board of Supervisors a black eye that refuses to heal," said Nathan Nayman, executive director of the Committee on Jobs and a longtime Daly critic. "There's nothing new here; he's maniacal and he's been given to outbursts on a regular basis."

Daly's supporters see him as an emotional and passionate leader who may take no prisoners in his political dealings but consistently, they say, puts his principles above any personal agenda.

"At the end of the day, I totally appreciate the fact that he is out there in the trenches," said Susan King, a leader of San Francisco's Green Party. "It's not 100 percent that I agree with him, but you know where his heart is and where his values are."

Daly himself sees his biggest accomplishments coming from his previous work on the budget and from his work on a pair of development projects -- the Rincon Hill towers and the recently approved plan to rebuild Trinity Plaza apartments at Seventh and Market streets.

Daly ushered the big dollar projects through City Hall, but secured concessions for his district from the developers. With Rincon Hill, developers agreed to spend $75 million in community improvements. Current residents of Trinity Plaza won unprecedented protections for their housing.

Daly grew up in comfortable Maryland suburbs north of Washington, D.C., and he early on took a keen interest in affordable housing. He attended Duke University, where he fought the school administration's plans to raze apartment buildings to build a parking lot. Daly and other protesters persuaded the school to spend $3 million to build low-cost housing for the displaced tenants.

He never graduated from Duke, though, and dropped out in part because he failed a political participation course. When Daly moved to San Francisco, he became involved in local politics through an advocacy group for the homeless called Mission Agenda.

Bill Barnes, who worked as Daly's aide his first five years in office, said he thinks the supervisor gets branded as abrasive not just because he is passionate, but because he is passionate for poor people. While Daly's personality may at times work against him, "I think the cause is a lot further ahead than if he wasn't there," Barnes said.

Barnes said Daly is one of the most, if not the most, effective legislator on the board, measured by the amount of significant legislation he sponsors that ultimately is passed. He also has become one of the city's key players on development, though that has brought with it criticism from opponents that he has evolved into the kind of politician he first ran against in 2000. Some big developers and investors who were political donors to former Mayor Brown contributed to Daly's 2006 re-election campaign.

"Chris Daly was supposed to be the guy to stop it. He didn't stop it, he just replaced it," said Eric Jaye, who is running Newsom's re-election campaign and is a fierce Daly critic. In regard to Daly's actions last week, Jaye said, "It would not be fair to McCarthy to call it McCarthyism."

But even with the criticism and the bad-boy behavior, Daly still enjoys some popularity -- and the next few weeks should show just how much damage he did to his work with the comments about Newsom.

At a City Hall budget rally last week, in the midst of the fallout from his comments about the mayor, Daly doled out high-fives, hugs and handshakes as he greeted people. As he walked through the several hundred people gathered, one man grabbed Daly's hand.

"We support you, brother," the man told Daly. Daly shook hands and then, as he turned to walk up the steps, replied, "Don't worry about me, worry about the people. I can take care of myself."